There are many things, Marita. Many things in front of me. Now that they have killed you like an ox at the slaughter. Now that they say they do not know how you died but found you already dead. I know that someone does not die unless something kills her. If people do not let it kill someone, then there is nothing to kill someone whose strength is known here even by Manyepo who called you liar when you told him the things that are too hot for his temper. But you simply said … if the ears refused to hear, let them go and listen to the buzzing of the bees in the beehive, then they will know that bees sting. That is the way to treat a dog which refuses to listen to its owner, let a stick be used on its head. Then it will know that when its owner speaks, ears must listen …

  This is night, Marita. Many things can happen in the night. Many things, bad things with names I cannot say in the night, but I walk home so that I can pour shame on my mother’s face. My feet cannot see the path they walk on. My eyes cannot see the obstacles which can blind them, but I will get there if I continue walking without looking back. My mind is not here any more. I am not ashamed of it because there is nothing for me here. Nothing, only ashes and broken roofs, and the trees whose firewood I cannot take freely. Only smoke which burns and tickles my eyes, nothing else. Even the water here does not belong to me. It belongs to Manyepo. The air here belongs to Manyepo. Nothing belongs to the farm workers who are so full of fear for Manyepo that if he tells them not to eat for many days, they will stop. Old people the age of Manyepo’s father kneel in front of Manyepo. ‘There is nothing the government in the city can do. I rule here,’ says Manyepo. ‘If your government wants to run this farm, let them bloody take over. Then we will see if they can run a farm,’ Manyepo says in his way of speaking badly about things he does not like. Things he despises. People he despises, ‘bad smells from these people,’ he chuckles when the workers leave his office, sweating for Manyepo to reap from the vast fields which stretch for ever.

  … Sit down and allow the night to pass … I hear you say, Marita. Sit down and allow the night to pass so that the snakes will not find reason to bury their teeth in you. Rest for a while. Rest. Go up a tree or a boulder. The leaves of the tree will share their secrecy with you for the remainder of the night. Weary muscles lead to a weary mind, young girl. The body is not made to last the whole night awake. Kneel there some time and urge yourself to rest. Pass the water inside you down there so that the land will know that a child is alone on the path which does not end. Do not force the throat to swallow a bone, the elders say. Calm your breath with rest. Calm your mind with the rest of the body. Rest. Even the flowers of the earth rest. They come out today and tomorrow they die out like little fireflies. They leave to go under the soil. That is their way of sleeping, resting for a long night before they come out bright. Rest the weary body. The work I did at Manyepo’s farm is enough for you also. I worked so that you do not work as hard as I have done, tearing the skin of your palm, the sole of your feet, the skin of your back, the bones of your shoulders. No, rest. To rest is to allow the milk of your body to come again, the power of your body. If you stagger on, you will weaken the body of your power. Then even the vultures will see you and know that they have a feast waiting for them. It is not good for a young body to be the food of vultures. Remember how they ate the body of Tarega’s daughter when she ran away from her old husband. It can happen to you. To fight on is all right, but a good fighter knows when to postpone the fight for another day. A good fighter knows when to stop the fight in order to sharpen the knives for a renewed fight. Young girl, breathe the breath of your rest so that you can meet sunrise with the new fight in your muscles. That is the way to fight. That is the way to walk the path whose destination you do not know … yes, I hear you call for the rest of my body, Marita. But you died, they killed you just like that. How can my soul rest? How can my body rest when my soul is not ready to rest? How…?

  14

  The Spirits Speak

  Marita will not forget the woman whose body lay near her when people in colourless uniforms went to bury her. She has no memory left, she feels the nibbling of thoughts which pass like the wind, like the smell of a new flower, but where she is, she has knowingness. She has some power, the warmth she shared when she sat with a woman she had not met before. Her thigh so close to the thigh of the other woman, feeling the pulse of the other woman in her own blood. The memory of the woman will always be there, but she wants to complete the work of looking for her son who went to join the fighters. The son who had only started to learn the things of life and death on the farm. The son who always complained about the bad ways of the farm school teacher. The son who knelt only to the girl he thought would be a good mother for his children, a friend to whom he wrote the only letter he ever wrote. No more letters, no more voices, no more breath. Nothing. The sky full of nothing. No stars, no sun, nothing. Also the woman whose husband sold out will remain there in the mortuary for many days to come. Nobody will come to claim the body from the house where they keep corpses so that they do not grow worms.

  But the girl still remembers a few of the things Marita says to her all the time. The girl sometimes kneels alone in the darkness of places not many people visit. She kneels and utters, with shivering lips, a few prayers to Marita. Marita, the woman whose breast was dark with many things which did not come to the lips. She kneels to say how Marita made her know many things about the bodies of men and women, young women who grow up to become old one day. The girl says many things until frightening people come to look for her in the forest so that she can remain enclosed in the place where they keep those whose heads are full of bad things, evil things which must be kept away from people with clean heads. She belongs there with the others who talk to themselves without waiting for an answer. Those who remain tied to beds with strong ropes so that they do not use their excessive strength to free themselves. They groan some of the time like beasts, but nobody listens to their story. Even children are there also. Little children who have just come from the breasts of mothers. But their mothers too do not come to see them. They are bad children, they say. Bad children who come to us during hours of evil. Many people are here in the house where people with bad heads are kept. They stare at you all the time without saying anything from the dry lips. No one will hear what those lips can say. Those who keep them treat them like children, speaking in twisted tongues the way children ask for water or food. But it does not matter, they keep them. Marita is no longer with them. She did not come here. The woman who asked for the body of the woman whom nobody knew is not here either, she has nobody to ask for her body from where she asked for Marita’s body. They may go to those who know how to try cases and say the chief of the people in uniforms slapped her to death, but her body has already been opened by unkind hands to see what has killed her. It is in the house where they keep bodies. It is there, not smiling. It is there, very cold. Nobody will come to ask for it. No voices will be heard seeking for the body to bury it in the proper way of the ancestors.

  The people with uniforms will talk in their small houses where they are kept so that they do not harm others. They will talk everything they want to talk. But they will not say all they should say. They will talk of evil spirits and bad days in their lives, but nobody will mention the spirit of the woman who wanted to bury a woman they did not know. No, it is just a bad day. Things are sometimes like that. Sometimes you meet a bird with broken wings. A bird which nobody wishes were their own bird. Then the sun rises and sets, flowers bloom and die, birds sing and feed their little ones, wives give birth and listen to the voices of the new children crying on their breasts before they name them Tapiwa, Marita, Tatenda, Mudiwa. They will give a name that tells many stories, many paths that have been walked with bare feet.

  15

  Janifa

  Tongues are bad things, Marita, bad things. They burn the small logs of the heart into big fires which nobody can put out. Big fires, Marita. Think of it, my own mother comes to see me in the house where people with bad heads are kept. With eyes that want to run away from her head, she mumbles like a child who has been discovered stealing milk from the hidden milk pot.

  ‘Are you—er—er—well?’ she says with the mouth which has eaten what should not be eaten.

  ‘How can I be well?’ I say to her. I do not want her to know all the things which my heart has known. ‘How can I be well?’ I say, then she takes a thing to remove bits of meat stuck in her teeth. ‘How can I be well? This is not a place for people whose heads are well,’ I say. ‘Do you not see the chains on my legs, it is so that I cannot run away to places where I can sit alone and see the dreams which Marita left me.’ People here do not see the dreams which Marita left for me. They are good dreams which fall on me like the rains. All the time without seasons, dreams of rains, bones and footsteps falling from the height of a cliff, scattering to the earth while the boys in the field whistle and shout as if they have seen a vulture tearing away the flesh of a carcase. Bones in flower-like flames of skeletons spread all over the place like a battlefield strewn with corpses of the freshly killed whose warm blood flows out of them like smoke from Manyepo’s chimney. ‘What mountain have I not climbed, mother?’ I say. ‘What mountain? What river have I not crossed? What river has not drowned me? What fire has not eaten me? Eating my fingers all the time like those finger-like pieces of meat which Chisaga brought you from Manyepo’s kitchen. Mother, every flower has its season. It will bloom when its heart of seasons says you must bloom. I am the flower of this season, mother. Nobody can stop me blooming. Do you know the pregnant woman cannot decide to put it off until another day? Yes, it is like that with me too. I am the axe whose sharpness you cannot touch now. I no longer rise from the same bed with you as I did when the smell of the leaves told me it was time to hear the song of the bird with an ominous voice. I am here in the house where people with bad heads are kept. Here.’

  Think of it, mother, tongues are bad things in the mouth of all who use them. Marita said words are little flames that are thrown around carelessly by all those who own them. But here I have no words which can burn because my words are words from a mouth whose owner’s head is full of bad things. Nobody thinks the words of the people with bad heads are words with water in them. They are smoke. But to think that a young man comes here and asks to be left alone with me, to tell me that he has been looking for me for many years, many years of searching many paths walked with no success. Many suns sent to rest with no results … I looked for you everywhere. I searched even in the mouth of the many caves which swallowed me to hide me from the mouth of many guns which thirsted for my blood. All the time … he says, shrugging his shoulders which look uneven like a man who has been carrying heavy things with one shoulder for many years.

  ‘What do you want from me in this house where people with bad heads are kept?’ I say to him.

  ‘I am the eagle which had no feathers. I have found where my feathers are so that I can be a true eagle,’ he says.

  ‘I have nothings to do with proverbs in this house where people with bad heads are kept. Nothing to do with that because nobody listens,’ I say to him.

  ‘It’s my mother who tells me where my feathers are,’ he says, sweating like Marita from the pain of Manyepo’s weeding.

  ‘Your mother? Who is your mother that you talk to me about her as if I have no mother of my own? You are not the only one who suckled from the dusty breast of a woman in the fields. You are not the only one whose eyes swallowed water dripping from the water-pot on a woman’s head,’ I say to him. But he does not want to stop. He is feverish like Manyepo’s ox after a bullet has gone through its head.

  ‘Janifa listen to me. You took my place when I left my mother to work alone for Manyepo with his hunger for bigger and bigger harvests every year. You were my mother’s only reason for staying on Manyepo’s farm. She died with your name in her heart. But now she is dead, I cannot take my place near her heart any more. I went to fight with guns, but the fight which I have now is bigger than the fight of guns and aeroplanes,’ he says, his eyes cutting through the sky like a knife cutting through things that are hard and soft at the same time.

  ‘I do not want to hear the words spilling from your mouth,’ I say to him. ‘They are useless words which many mouths have uttered before. Go and fight your fights alone without coming to the house of people whose heads are not straight. Go. Nobody binds your legs with chains like these on my legs. Nobody stops you from being alone under a tree to dream your dreams of fights and aeroplanes. Go away and sing the song of the go-away bird to all who can hear you in the village. I do not want to hear the songs of so many birds which Marita told me about. Go away now so that I do not ask the people who keep the people with crooked heads to take you away and lock you up in your own house of people with bad heads, people who do not think straight.’ I spit on the hot soil like one whose mouth is full of dust from a long journey.

  ‘Janifa, my heart cannot rest until you are my wife and I take you away from this house of ghosts. You should not be here, Janifa. You should be with me in all my troubles, in your troubles.’

  I stare at the young man with boots which are hard. They are hard like stone, but I do not think he knows they are hard because he can walk easily as if he has bare feet. Bare feet like Marita’s feet as she came out of the fields. Cracked feet which Marita always said were better than shoes because they did not go for repairs all the time. Marita, how you used to work so hard, so hard, sweating all the time so that Manyepo could harvest better all the time. How the skin of your palms cracked all the time and you did not mind … I am waiting for my son, that is all. He will come one day so that my sweat does not continue to be watering the fields of the white man … Marita would say without much pain in her eyes, calm eyes that saw many things in many hearts.

  Marita, your son has come back. He limps when he walks, but he is here. Now that he is here, all the insects can sing their songs and run after the scent of the flowers. All the birds can make their nests and sing from the tops of the trees whose flowers smell with the smell of rains. Do not continue to carry the heart of anger which you carried on your way to be buried by those whose hearts did not know you. Even the woman whose body nobody claims from the house where they keep corpses so that they do not grow worms, she can lie there in the coldness and hear the birds which welcome the child of your womb. Marita, a womb is a dark place, nobody knows what will come out of it. So if it brings out something with flowers on its head, it must be kept under the armpit. It must be kept under the armpit where not many hearts know. Many hearts must not know the things hidden under the armpit, Marita. Did you not say so with the words of your own mouth, a mouth with the sweat of Manyepo’s maize fields? Yes, you said so in the pain of the loss of this boy who wants to marry me now. Marita, marrying me is not like plucking mangoes from Manyepo’s big field of fruits. It is a hard thing for a man with so many scars from many fights of guns and aeroplanes. To hear people say without shame … he married a woman from the house where they keep people with crooked insides of their heads, he had run short of the women who make good wives. Why did he choose to sleep on the heap of manure when his warm bed is waiting for him down there? Maybe his head is also full of scorpions and lizards, many things which soldiers have seen in their fight with guns and aeroplanes. To marry like this is to insult the mother whose womb the young man sat in for many moons. It is a shame that a war can kill such a young man’s mind, they will say. They will say bad things about you, things which will kill the nest of my own heart. But to have them say bad things about you is hard for me, Marita, very hard. It is like the sting of many bees, Marita, a whole swarm of bees stinging us when our hands are tied so that we cannot chase them. Bad. It is bad for the heart inside the chest of a woman like me. It can kill like the thorns that killed the man who wanted to swallow them.

  But for now, the sun has risen again from its long visit to the fires which enkindle it. Its fires burn across the valleys of the heart, and the smell of flowers in the heart does not fall on stumps without noses. The sun has risen so that it can shine on the bones scattered over the plains. Even the cry of the woman whose body nobody claims is there in the glow of the young sun so that you can see her smile in her death. She smiles because she knows somebody knows her, somebody can claim her body from the house where they keep corpses so that they do not grow worms. She can stand up without shame and say to the keeper of the place, now if you think nobody will claim my corpse from here for ever, it is only because your eyes have too much mud in them to allow you to see … Yes, the woman can wipe away death from her face as if she is washing her face in the morning of her death …

  And when they have sat down in the shade at the place where they work, they will say many things about this girl who once was in the house where they kept people with heads full of bad things. They will say many more things so that their tongues can go to sleep with tiredness, but they will not forget to point fingers at the place I work and the many songs of fighting with guns and aeroplanes, the many songs I will sing to the ears of those who have died so that the bird which once had broken wings can fly for all to see. A black bird with wings broken by so many ruthless hands that many people think it is not possible for the bird to fly again. Then they will see footsteps of the bones of the woman rising early in the morning to urge all the villagers, all the cattle, the birds, the insects and the hills to rise with the rising bones, to sing with the singing bones …

  ‘Mother, is Chisaga still alive?’ I ask with hidden fury.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, tearfully.

  ‘Then go and live with him,’ I say without hiding my eyes from talking with her eyes. She walks away with her face hidden away from me. She wants to hide her whole body away from me, she crawls away like an injured cockroach, to go to her place of death. She has prepared her place of death already, but I do not want to know it. She crawls away, injured too, never to come back again to the house where they keep people with crooked heads so that they do not harm others. She will not come back because she has gone where the sun has not visited, a place where one does not come back like the sun. I will stand here to watch the rising sun, to see the little animals jumping up and down with the power of the early sun with a new fire to cleanse the infected soil. I will stand here all the time, then walk so that these chains on my legs will have no purpose. Then the keepers of this place will come and say … We will remove the chains soon when we know you are well … But I will take the broken chains with my own hands and say … Do not worry yourselves, I have already removed them by myself. I have been removing them from my heart for many years, now my legs and hands are free because the mountains and the rivers I saw with my own eyes could not fail to remove all the chains of this place … Then I will go without waiting for them to say go.

 

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